Germany - The Avolites Group takes to the road for 2012's first international trade fair for the events technology sector covering a broad spectrum of products and services with their German partner Trendco in Hall 11, stand D50 and C50 at ProLight+Sound in Frankfurt. Avolites Media Ltd. will exhibit its new Ai Media Server in tandem with Avolites Ltd's Sapphire Touch and Titan Mobile lighting control consoles.

Recently, Avolites Media Ltd bought the intellectual property rights to manufacture and distribute the Ai Media Server worldwide. Prolight + Sound offers visitors the chance to view the future of this advanced and fast developing system. As well as demonstrating the currently available Ai Media Server, visitors will be granted the first preview of Sapphire Media. The Sapphire Media Live Video Controller creates a new class of show media controllers unlike anything seen be

Qatar - Dubai-based event production company Kenkaato has produced the first ever live public music event to be staged in the Museum of Islamic Art (MIA) Park in Doha, Qatar.

The initial concert in a series of music shows planned over the coming months was headlined by Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens - also on his first ever live appearance in the Middle East - and was completely sold out, attracting a capacity audience of 2,800 including 221 VIPs and senior members of the Qatari Royal Family.

Kenkaato is a new company established by Sarah Whitmarsh and Daryl Payne to provide imaginative, turnkey, full production solutions for all types of live events.

Both Whitmarsh and Payne have extensive experience working on a variety of large scale and high profile productions in the Middle East region.

The company's brief for the MIA Park show from the Qatar Museums Authority included the p

UK - The PLASA 2012 free registration offer ends in just under 48 hours! Over 9,000 people have taken advantage of the free registration offer for this year's PLASA 2012, taking place at Earls Court in London from 9 - 12 September. Register before midnight on the 29th February and save £20 on the standard ticket price.

All previous PLASA Show visitors have been sent this special offer via email, and free registration for new visitors is live at www.plasashow.com

(Claire Beeson)

UK - Black Light reports that it has significantly expanded the storage and warehouse capacity at its West Shore headquarters in Edinburgh by 50%. This move will allow the company to enhance its hire and sales stock and will boost its capacity to serve its customers.

"This exciting development shows that we are really bucking the current economic trend and growing strongly," says Black Lights head of company development, Phil Haldane. "This is all part of our push to continually improve our service delivery, while still keeping the company friendly and approachable. We are really excited at the new opportunities this opens up for us."

The expansion will see the company move into a third unit at the West Shore Trading Estate, where it has been located for the past two years. The new premises comprise over 4,500sq.ft of warehousing and will give the company a

Qatar - Three TV studio tents were installed by TechnoPro llc, with lighting equipment from PR Lighting and trussing from Litec for Doha TV, for the Qatar National Day 2011 celebrations at Darb-a-Saai, Doha.

As the National Day TV channel, Doha TV took up its makeshift studios in Darb-a-Saai which were used to broadcast a special set of programmes, by hosting individuals who had significant roles in Darb-a-Saai activities.

They constructed the high impact lighting rig around 22 x PR Lighting XL 1200 spots, 20 x PR Lighting XL700's, and 46 x PR XLED 590 (each head containing 90 powerful LED's).

TechnoPro, one of the major suppliers for Qatar National Day, has been servicing the technical needs of the Qatar National Day Organising Committee for three consecutive years now. This includes professional LED screens, lighting equipment, audio equipment, truss structures and power d

UK - Lighting and sound rental company Entec supplied lighting production for three high profile shows at London Fashion Week - Paul Smith, Mulberry and Moschino. A projection system and media server was also provided for Paul Smith, and all three projects were once again managed for Entec by Adam Stevenson.

Paul Smith featured the largest lighting rig and was the biggest space, staged in the Lawrence Hall of the Royal Horticultural Halls in Victoria, central London. It also accommodated one of the largest audiences of the whole event. Entec has supplied lighting for Paul Smith's LFW shows for at least the last eight years, working with several different lighting designers in the process.

Lec Croft was Paul Smith's LD for this season (and also last), who has an illustrious LFW history dating back to the late 1980s. The creative brief this time continued on from the summer coll

Belgium - LumenRadio was recently part of the celebration of Belgian city Turnhout's historic water tower and its status as the 2012 Culture City of Flanders.

Brick water towers used to increase water pressure were once a common sight in lower laying areas of Belgium, but Turnhout's massive 38m high tower is now the only one of its kind remaining in the entire Flemish region of the country. The tower was granted landmark status in 1987 and has become a visual focal point for this city located about half way between Antwerp in Belgium and Eindhoven in Holland.

Philips has more than 1,700 employees in Turnhout and its headquarter is located in Eindhoven about 40km away. As gold sponsor of Turnhout's status as 2012 Culture City of Flanders they enthusiastically embraced the idea to make the tower, with its central downtown location, into a colorful beacon and anchor site for the

Germany - Over 200 Robe moving lights were used by lighting designer Manuel da Costa on the first series of the Voice of Germany (VOG) reality talent competition, recorded at Studio Berlin and produced by Schwartzkopff TV.

Da Costa needed a lighting rig that would give him ultimate flexibility, and again chose Robe to be at the core of this, based on his past successful experiences with the brand.

The 98 ColorSpot 1200E ATs were the backbone of the system. These, together with 98 ColorSpot 2500E ATs, 31 ColorWash 1200E ATs and 16 ColorBeam 2500E ATs were all picked for their intensity and power.

"The reliability, light output and colour are excellent." he states, "The movement is also really quick and I really like the smooth dimming of the ColorSpots."

While the ColorSpots picked out the set architecture, the Washes functioned as audience back-l

Germany - Peavey Electronics is teaming up with Martin Professional to sponsor the popular Agora Stage at this year's Musikmesse in Frankfurt (21-24). Peavey and Martin will be providing a complete audio and lighting setup for both Agora stages during the entire four-day trade fair.

The Agora Stage, a large festival tent, is the exhibition's main performance space with live entertainment throughout the show. On Thursday evening, 22 March, Peavey and Martin will be holding a special Agora Stage event with entertainment including The Alex Skolnick Trio and the Peavey All Stars.

Peavey's commercial audio division will be supplying all the audio for the Agora Stage's setup, from the mixing desks to front-of-house PA and monitoring system. The gear that will be used includes the Peavey Versarray 212, which is powered by Crest Pro amplifiers and controlled using the companies Media

UK - Entertainment lighting specialist White Light is appearing at the Arc Show this week in London's Business Design centre.

Products from White Light's family of lighting manufacturers will be on stand M36 and will feature units from Coemar, Core Lighting, i-Pix, Interactive Technologies, Leader Light, Prism Projection and Wireless Solutions.

White Light is also sponsoring the foyer by supplying LeaderLight's new series of street lights. Lighting designer Durham Marenghi will also be using i-Pix BB4s and Leader Light606's, as well as placing a giant light bulb in the foyer to take things back to basics.

Coemar's Reflection Series will make an appearance in the form of the Reflection LEDko Full Spectrum, an innovative 'Multi-LED' light source producing a uniform beam with no pixels or dots and full spectrum colour mixing and the Reflection LEDko VariWhite.

On display from

Denmark - The Exterior 400 Image Projector from Martin Professional is a fully-weatherproofed LED image projector with over 7000 lumens of power that can effectively integrate dynamic logos, textures and other graphics into outdoor lighting designs for greater visual impact.

Housing up to six easy-to-replace designs (gobos), the Exterior 400 Image Projector is suitablel for commercial logo projection or textured projections in architectural environments. Gobos are fully customizable for the ultimate in design freedom.

Up to eight interchangeable colours allows for complete colour customization. High-quality dichroic colour filters enable rich and long-lasting colour projections.

A range of programmable effects such as colour scrolling, image rotation, focus and iris effects can be used to add an extra element of eye-catching animation. The luminaire is also fully dimmable to

Germany - In an unprecedented move, GLP has announced that the LED light engine used in their impression Spot One and impression Wash One fixtures now carries a full five year warranty.

The replaceable LED engine gives the highest light output from a single RGB source in a Spot or Wash based fixture on the market today - and to ensure that customers are confident in this latest technology, GLP have issued this new warranty, says the company. Being built on a 'plug and play' integration level, the light engine itself is easy enough to replace, should it ever be required.

GLP's business director, Kasper Gissel, commented, "This five year warranty is something we are very proud to share with our customers. We know the reliability of our fixture range and the component parts, and we also know from our customers that they are fed up with the wild and wacky claims we have seen

USA - FocusTrack, the production lighting documentation system, and SpotTrack, its companion programme for recording followspot cues, have had a long involvement with the hit musical Billy Elliot in London, Australia, New York and on tour around the USA. Now that involvement is continuing with the new, faster-moving US 'tour 3' of the show.

Designed once again by Rick Fisher, working with associate LDs Dan Walker and Kristina Kloss, the new tour has downsized the rig in order to allow it to be set-up more quickly on that road while retaining the overall look that won Fisher a Tony Award for his work on the show in New York.

The adaptation to the new rig used FocusTrack as the reference point to previous productions: the software held a photographic record of every focus of every lamp in the show, and also every individual cue in the show. This information could instantl

UK - At 6.51am on Monday, 23 January an artificial sun rose over Trafalgar Square in London- an hour before the first appearance of the real sun. Then once the real sunset at 4.33pm, the artificial one kept going for another three hours - giving Londoners a total of four extra hours of sunlight on the day that psychiatrists describe as 'blue Monday'.

The Trafalgar Sun was created by public art group Greyworld, in conjunction with Tropicana's Brighter Mornings campaign. The lighting equipment for this dramatic project was supplied by entertainment lighting specialist White Light, who also provided a demo/rehearsal space and equipment to the Greyworld team over the project's six-month development period.

As Greyworld's Andrew Shoben explains, that timescale included everything "from re-assuring Transport for London that the sun wouldn't blind taxi drivers in the area to the

UK - On Friday 22 June a group of intrepid motorbike riders hailing from all sectors of the entertainment technology industry will set off from the Royal Albert Hall in London for a four-day open-air tour of England's green and pleasant A-Roads.

Their mission? To raise as much money as possible for industry charity The Theatrical Guild (TTG), the only charity dedicated to looking after the interests of backstage and Front of House personnel.

"2012 marks the third First Night Riders event and we're hoping to make it the most successful and fun ride yet," says organiser David Edelstein, who is a keen biker and managing director of stage engineering company Triple E. "It's important that we value the help charities like The Theatrical Guild provide. TTG is the only charity in the UK available to anyone who works, or has worked in theatre - backstage or front of hou

Germany - LumenRadio recently helped to put some additional shimmer on the Thier-Galerie, a new upscale shopping and entertainment centre in Dortmund. Its sleek and elegant design, with a four-story glass covered house-within-a-house as an architectural centrepiece, has raised the bar for design and innovation in such public spaces.

When time came to add something special for Christmas the task to develop and implement a concept that could take the already glittering interior to the next level was given to Jens Graube from Straight Technical Solutions GmbH. No less than 8,000 super-sized golden Christmas ornaments would take centre stage and a compliment of designer Christmas trees and decorations would complete the picture. The entire installation was lit by an assortment of Litecraft AT3 LED and Robe Robin 300 LEDWash fixtures, all supplied by LMP, providing the necessary tool

Germany - Two new ArKaos innovations will be on display on the ArKaos stand at ProLight+Sound as the company presents its new ArKaos Hub network monitor and a new Video Mapping Software.

ArKaos Hub is an application specifically designed to monitor the state of multiple servers running MediaMaster in fixture mode. ArKaos Hub's key function is as a real-time backup system that gives instantaneous protection against server failure.

"A mid-show server failure has potentially drastic effects on your live show and takes time to restore as you struggle to re-establish the physical connections between projector and backup server. Enter ArKaos Hub!" the company says.

ArKaos Hub monitors servers in real-time and, in the event of server failure, automatically issues a configurable command to the video switchers, instructing them to re-establish connections between projectors

UK - Pro Light Concepts Ltd is a rapidly expanding supplier of innovative lighting and sound equipment to the entertainment industry. On display on stand S-D12 at PLASA Focus: Leeds will be product displays from its vast range of brands.

Staff will be on hand to discuss the products available from Pro Light's office and distribution centre in Lancashire for worldwide dispatch. The stand will also feature many new products, including the LED Quad colour Q Color and Color Storm LED Battens along with the Xperior Platinum 5R Spot from iSolution. Many other new items from eLumen8 will be launched at PLASA Focus including fixtures specifically designed for theatre, stage and T.V.

Ireland - Production Services Ireland (PSI)'s Dublin branch kicked off 2012 with the supply of full lighting production, trussing and associated rigging for two high profile TV series - Take Me Out (Ireland) and Family Fortunes - both recorded at the Helix Theatre, Dublin City University.

Andrew Leonard, lighting designer for both shows worked closely with console programmer and live visuals operator Peter Canning from High Resolution Lighting. PSI's project manager was Ciaran Tallon, and it was the first time that Dublin and Belfast based PSI has been involved with either show.

The series producer was Billy McGrath, and the production company in both cases was Sideline Productions for TV3. Twenty episodes of both shows were shot in two two-week slots, with a two-day changeover in-between, and the sets for each production were designed by Anita Barrett.

For

USA - Madonna may have headlined Super Bowl XLVI's Halftime Show, but Clay Paky Sharpy fixtures made a name for themselves too, helping to light up the stage for the Material Girl at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Lighting designer Al Gurdon, of UK-based Incandescent Design, utilised 204 Sharpys supplied by PRG after being impressed with their performance on FOX's X Factor.

Gurdon has been recognised internationally for his TV and event lighting design. He holds the Lighting Designer of the Year title from the TPI Awards and has netted Lighting Design Awards, Royal Television Society Awards, and Australia's Helpmann Award and Knight of Illumination Award. He has served as lighting designer for the Eurovision Song Contest.

For the Super Bowl Halftime Show, Bruce Rodgers of Tribe Inc. was once again the production designer, All Access Staging built the s

UK - On Thursday 9 February, second year students from the Production Lighting and Lighting Design strands of the BA Theatre Practice at Central School of Speech and Drama hosted the New Technology Showcase for White Light in the Embassy Theatre.

The event gave White Light the opportunity to invite their guests and members of the ALD into a "sales force free" theatre environment to check out the latest lighting kit. The ALD annual Pub Quiz then followed, providing a chance for a bit of lighting-orientated fun and a few drinks with friends.

For the lighting students at Central, the day of the event was the tip of a much bigger iceberg. They took key roles in planning and running the whole event, and worked with Production Lighting professional Nathaniel Seekins and lighting programmers from MA Lighting. They also learnt the importance of prepping, on-site with White L

UK - Manchester based dbn Lighting has supplied a custom LED and control solution to the city's Whitworth Art Gallery which will run for three months as part of the Cotton : Global Threads exhibition - a compelling story about the production, consumption and global trade in cotton.

The light work is designed by artist Liz Rideal and involves the illumination of nine large windows on the top storey at the front of the building, with video material from a film - Light Curtain - which is played back via a media server also supplied by dbn.

Challenges included having to fit all the necessary LED lighting equipment to light the windows into a 30 cm deep space, keeping each window's physical lighting installation completely self-contained within its recessed space.

dbn's Nick Buckley is project managing. dbn has worked for the Gallery several times in the past, and t

UK - PLASA's Technical Resource Office announces that an RDM and sACN Developers Conference and Plugfest will take place on the 26 - 28 April, in the UK, at Gatwick Manor, London Road at Lowfield Heath, just south of Gatwick Airport.

This Developers Conference aims to provide a European forum for manufacturers, designers, consultants and prospective users; and to ensure that the adoption of these new standards achieves desired levels of interoperability and reliability.

The "Plugfest" is a hands-on opportunity for product developers to try their products and code implementations with products from a variety of other manufacturers, with support from their industry peers in an environment that encourages co-operation and improved understanding of the standards, and with the aim of achieving high levels of interoperability.

Typically, engineers participate in these ev

Germany - At ProLight+Sound 2012 Havells-Sylvania will be showcasing its range of Photo Optic lamps for the professional stage and studio lighting market.

Havells-Sylvania will be in Hall 9, on stand 0F42 demonstrating the benefits of its SPG (Special Product Group) lamp products, throughout the event. Products on display will include the full BriteArc range of Photo Optic Discharge Lamps, as well as the PAR56 LED designed for underwater applications.

Lieven Maes, international director of the special product group comments, "This is an extremely important show for the international market and we are looking forward to demonstrating our products to the key decision makers in the industry. Our comprehensive range of Photo Optic lamps is suitable for all actual applications. This 'Made in Belgium' BriteArc range exceeds even the highest standards."

One of the highlig

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